Pregnant moms, you have so many demands placed on your body: hormonal stress to prepare for the birthing process and physical stress from your expanding bellies. Have you ever considered chiropractic to put your body back into balance and to help you better function while a new beautiful life is growing inside you?
There are specific techniques prenatal-trained chiropractors have at their disposal that can make your pregnancy go smoothly … techniques that are gentle, non-invasive, and drug-free. The Webster Technique is one of them.
What is the Webster Technique?
In the ‘70s, Larry Webster, DC, founder of the International Chiropractic Pediatric Association, discovered a connection between misalignments of the sacral and pelvic bones and abnormal fetal positioning. He developed a gentle chiropractic adjusting technique to restore movement and alignment in the sacrum.
Today, the Webster Technique is used regularly throughout the chiropractic community with expectant moms for relief from general aches and pains and resorting proper alignment of the pelvis to support room and proper positioning of their unborn child.
What Dr. Webster first observed was, not only did unborn babies receive more unrestricted moment in utero, but that babies would regularly turn to a head-down position on their own after the adjustment. During his career, Dr. Webster himself claimed a success rate over 90 percent, working with approximately 1,000 pregnant moms.
How Does it Work?
How can the Webster Technique do all that? The Webster Technique focuses on relieving the tension in your ligaments, balancing the pelvis by adjusting the sacrum and addressing any additional tight muscles that connect to the uterus or pelvis. This allows you to stay as balanced as possible while giving your growing baby the optimal room for movement.
Due to the gentle nature of The Webster technique, it’s a safe adjustment to receive throughout pregnancy. Many OB-GYNs and midwives refer their patients to prenatal chiropractors who use the Webster Technique if for nothing else other than to set the stage for better birth chances.
Proper Positioning for Birth
Most babies assume the proper head-down position before labor because their instincts direct them to. This is the same way babies instinctively know to push with their feet off the uterus during contractions and, once born, to latch on to a breast.
If your pelvis is unbalanced and the rest of your spine has to compensate, those areas become unbalanced as well. The unbalanced sacrum, pelvis, muscles, ligaments and associated muscles and ligaments of the uterus can contribute to baby not wanting to assume the proper head down position.
The Webster Technique helps here by putting the sacrum and the pelvis in proper alignment and functioning … essentially the entire spine. With gentle chiropractic adjustments, misalignments can be corrected, rebalancing pelvic muscles and ligaments and reducing strain on the uterus on one side more than the other.
There have been documented cases in chiropractic and obstetric literature of pregnant mothers with babies in the breech position who sought chiropractic care and received The Webster Technique. The result was positive: baby positioned himself/herself head down.
Freeing Up Baby’s Movement
Exactly how can your pelvis get so out of whack during pregnancy? At the bottom of the spine are the pelvis and sacrum. Because the pelvis and sacrum move with a direct relationship, most of the time, bones on one side of the pelvis can become restricted causing the opposite side of the sacrum to have to compensate. This can result in both not moving the way they were intended to and can become restricted within that natural movement.
Not only can misalignment – also known as restriction in movement – cause pain or tightness, but the pulling forces can also trap baby in whatever position they were in at the time the restriction occurred. This uterine tension may decrease the ability of baby to move into a more comfortable and helpful position for birth. And, because of all this tilting and twisting of the pelvic bones, the birth canal can narrow, possibly complicating baby’s ability to birth the way it was designed naturally.
Until the pull on the uterus is adjusted, the constraint will remain and baby may be restricted in other ways. These other positions that may make the process of labor a little more difficult is posterior (also known as sunny-side up), asynclitic, transverse breech, and Frank breech. Moms experiencing intrauterine constraint will often report a decrease in the baby’s movement or jerky, tense movements, indicating their movement is restricted.
Easier Labor
Besides repositioning babies in breech position before delivery, moms can also benefit from the Webster Technique to ease discomfort during pregnancy and labor. That’s because the realignment balances pelvic muscles and ligaments reduce pain and discomfort associated with pelvic twisting.
The Webster Technique not only puts your baby in the correct birth position, but it can also realign your pelvis and decrease ligament tension and pain to give you a more comfortable pregnancy. Any combination of misalignments of these bones can contribute to lower back pain and set the stage for a more uncomfortable, longer labor – possibly even resulting in medical interventions such as C-section, which is major surgery.
Proper Development of Nervous System
Your growing baby can also benefit later on by getting relief from some of the stress and pressure placed upon them by a restricted uterus. This can affect their growing spine and nervous system development at a time when they are most vulnerable and at a time when it is most easily corrected – before birth.
With the Webster Technique, you and your baby have a greater chance of a proper, easier, and safer delivery and the discomfort and pain can be minimized throughout your pregnancy.
Who We Are
We are Doctors Michelle Parker and Darcy Goode. Our clinic has been certified in Webster Technique and providing care to pregnant women, dads, and children since 2010. Both of us have numerous post-graduate chiropractic training in working on the muscles and bones of expecting moms and newborns by integrating The Webster Technique, craniosacral therapy, myofascial release, and pregnancy-tailored chiropractic adjustments.
Many OB-GYNs and midwives are referred to us for Webster Technique use to help balance out the pelvis and ligaments of pregnant moms.
Dr. Parker is the only pediatric certified chiropractic by the Academy Council in Parker County. She is also an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant.
Located Near Fort Worth
The office of The Chiropractic Place for Mommy and Me is in Aledo, Texas, just 15 minutes west of downtown Fort Worth or 10 minutes east of Weatherford, Hudson Oaks, and Willow Park.
Feel free to visit our social media pages on Instagram @TheChiroPlaceforMommyandMe or Facebook @TheChiroPlace to get a feel for our atmosphere and how we work with entire families and pregnant moms, mothers, and children. We are proud to offer a family-friendly, kid-approved, and mother-oriented space to the community. Give our office a call to see if The Webster Technique adjustment can help you by calling us at 682-214-0408.